Met Office Hadley Centre and Climatic Research Unit HadCRUT4 and CRUTEM4 Temperature Data Sets Adjusted/Corrected/Updated… Can You Guess The Impact?

The Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, have adjusted/corrected/updated their HadCRUT4 & CRUTEM4 data sets, the update occurred with the April data recently released. There does not appear to have been a press release and there was no mention of the forthcoming change in this April 15, 2013 Met Office press release that covers the data sets, however version update tags were placed in bold at the top of the HadCRUT4 page;

“Update: An updated version of HadCRUT4 is now available. HadCRUT4 is now at version HadCRUT.4.2.0.0. Details of this update can be found here

Update: CRUTEM4 has been updated to version CRUTEM.4.2.0.0. Details of this update can be found here.

The HadCRUT4 page notes that the HadCRUT4 “land ensemble has been updated to use station data for CRUTEM4 version CRUTEM.4.2.0.0” and the Release Notes for version CRUTEM.4.2.0.0 state that:

“Additions to the CRUTEM4 archive in version CRUTEM.4.2.0.0

The changes listed below refer mainly to additions of mostly national collections of digitized and/or homogenized monthly station series. Several national meteorological agencies now produce/maintain significant subsets of climate series that are homogenized for the purposes of climate studies. In addition, data-rescue types of activities continue and this frequently involves the digitization of paper records which then become publicly available.

The principal subsets of station series processed and merged with CRUTEM (chronological order) are:

German/Polish – a number of German and a few Polish series – non-homogenized

Ugandan – non-homogenized

USA (USHCNv2.5) – homogenized

Canada – homogenized

In addition, there have been some corrections of errors. These are mostly of a random nature and the corrections have generally been done by manual edits. For a listing of new source codes in use, see below (end).”

While the magnitude of the changes is not that large, many of the adjustments/corrections/updates to HadCRUT4;

Also, some of the regional changes appear quite contrived, e.g. it looks like they found five hundredths of a degree of extra warming in the Northern Hemisphere in the last couple years:

Met Office – Hadley Center – Click the pic to view at source

South America they found almost a tenth of a degree of warming over the last decade;

Met Office – Hadley Center – Click the pic to view at source

Africa, had five hundredths of a degree of extra warming in the last few years;

Met Office – Hadley Center – Click the pic to view at source

and Australia/New Zealand a tenth of a degree of additional warming over the last few years:

Met Office – Hadley Center – Click the pic to view at source

Now updating data sets to include additional measurement locations and improve precision is usually a good thing, and if this was the only occurrence of an adjustment/correction/update resulting in additional warming, one might give the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia the benefit of the doubt. However, over the last several years they have progressed through;

and it seems like the impact of each adjustment/correction/update is to increase the appearance of recent warming. The move from HadCRUT3 to HadCRUT4 was particularly troubling, i.e.;

“HadCRUT4 was introduced in March 2012. [2]It “includes the addition of newly digitised measurement data, both over land and sea, new sea-surface temperature bias adjustments and a more comprehensive error model for describing uncertainties in sea-surface temperature measurements”. [3] Overall, the net effect of HadCRUT4 versus HadCRUT3 is an increase in the average temperature anomaly, especially around 1950 and 1855, and less significantly around 1925 and 2005. [4]Also, the warmest year on record, which was 1998 with HadCRUT3, is now 2010 with HadCRUT4. [5]” Wikipedia

The difference between HadCRUT3 to HadCRUT4 is clearly visible in this WoodForTrees graph;

WoodForTrees.org – Paul Clark – Click the pic to view at source

however, note that WoodForTrees.org is still on CRUTEM.4.1.0.0, i.e. thus that difference will grow if/when WFTs is updated to CRUTEM.4.2.0.0

Also a note should be made regarding the graph that showed Hadcrut4 was about to go below the 95% mark. With the old version, 2011 and 2012 had anomalies of 0.399 and 0.433 respectively. The new Hadcrut4 has 2011 and 2012 go up to 0.406 and 0.448 respectively. It appears as if they bought themselves some time, but as you can see in the table, the average for the first three months is 0.420. So while this is even below the original 0.433, it is only for three months so it does not mean too much yet.

Source

HADCRUT4.1

HADCRUT4.2

1.yr

2010

2010

1.an

0.540

0.547

2.yr

2005

2005

2.an

0.534

0.539

3.yr

1998

1998

3.an

0.523

0.531

Jan

0.378

Feb

0.476

Mar

0.410

ave

0.420

rnk

12th

Alright, so how many of you guessed wrong and thought that the impact of the adjustments/corrections/updates to HadCRUT4 and CRUTEM4 was to decrease recent warming?…

99 thoughts on “Met Office Hadley Centre and Climatic Research Unit HadCRUT4 and CRUTEM4 Temperature Data Sets Adjusted/Corrected/Updated… Can You Guess The Impact?”

Actually, I guessed that the adjustments meant we’re all DOOMED!!! so I would have been right whether the adjustments were up or down, because as we all know, the pre-adjustment climate is the only one that can “sustain” life on this planet. 🙂

Basically rendering null and void any credibility from the climate science community at CRU and anywhere else. No instrument is sensitive enough, so they basically make it up as they go along. Tiresome, plodding drudgery masquerading as something to get all excited about.

Ever since Wood For Trees [WFT] began posting the Hadcrut4 database, I knew they had invented #4 for only one reason: to show a scarier rise in global temperature than #3 showed. But that scarier rise is only the result of hand-fabricating the record. It is not reality.
Readers of WUWT know that Hadcru is fabricating the temperature record. Why? Because there is no grant money for telling the truth: that there is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening with global temperatures. It has all happened in the past, repeatedly, and to a much greater degree.Scientists have been trained with grant funds the way Pavlov’s dogs were trained with dog biscuits.
Unfortunately, scientists as a group are no different than any other group.

“and it seems like the impact of each adjustment/correction/update is to increase the appearance of recent warming. “

This is a problem. This is a good example of bias creeping in. Even if some adjustments mean colder, it’s the overall impact…………..hotter than we previously thought.
Did I see CRU? Now, who do I know at CRU? Jones is ma main man. What did he see from 1998 to 2010?

Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 5th July, 2005
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant….”
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009
‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’
—–
Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010
“I’m a scientist trying to measure temperature. If I registered that the climate has been cooling I’d say so. But it hasn’t until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend.”
—–
Dr. Phil Jones – BBC – 13th February 2010
[Q] B – “Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming”
[A] “Yes, but only just”.

Yes, the New Zealand data was adjusted by NIWA some years ago — the raw data shows no trend whatsoever — but the adjustments were too ludicrous to be taken up by CRUTEM. Now the time for shame has passed — they’ll take any adjustments they can get.

I’m having a conversation with a somewhat open-minded, but confused, atheist/skeptic “climate change” believer on Twitter that seems relevant.
Among other things, she linked to this 2012 publication (pdf) on the NASA website for showing temperature increase, and I linked to here.But look at how effective their propaganda is. You really have to read that conversation, I think, to believe it. (The other day, I had to explain to her how the term “climate change denier” made no sense because no one denies the climate changes, especially those who believe it’s naturally caused.)
She’s actually telling me she thinks they moved from the term “global warming” to “climate change” because the public couldn’t understand the concept of average warming increases.
I’m pointing out to her that “climate change” covers all situations, is unfalsifiable, and is totally manipulative. This should be evident to any thinking person, but apparently my species is just this stupid.
Come to think of it, there’s so much evidence for the stupidity of Homo sapiens that it hardly needs to be remarked upon.

Wow ! It is astonishing the effort of the so called ‘climate scientists’ to ‘homogenize their ‘measurements’ … Ah Ha … to agree with their political-religous beliefs !
The government of the UK is the Seat of the Holy Anglian Church ! Tread lightly there !
From Wikipedia:
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising the Church of England and churches which are historically tied to it or have similar beliefs, worship practices and church structures.[1] The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English Church. Adherents of Anglicanism are called Anglicans. The great majority of Anglicans are members of churches which are part of the international Anglican Communion.[2] There are, however, a number of churches outside of the Anglican Communion which also consider themselves to be Anglican, most notably those referred to as Continuing Anglican churches.[3]
Refs:
[1] a b “What it means to be an Anglican”. Church of England. Retrieved 16 March 2009.
[2] “The Anglican Communion official website – homepage”. Archived from the original on 19 March 2009. Retrieved 16 March 2009.
[3] Retrieved 9 November 2010.
Although the word Anglican usually refers to those churches in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury,[55] many Continuing Anglican bodies in the United States use the term Anglican to both assert their heritage and also to differentiate themselves from the Episcopal Church.
Ref:
[55] Accessed 9 November 2010
Now a question:
Is Human Forced Climate Change Greater Than Natural Forced Climate Change ?
For brevity I will render a conundrum:
The Anglian Church [tradition, society, knowledge] asserts Man as the shaper of all Creation.
They are funding [i.e. giving cash i.e. money that is not accountable, recordable or otherwise noted by electronic or written transaction] to the IPCC ! How lovely.
The Catholic Church [tradition, society, knowledge] asserts God as the shaper of all Creation.
They are not funding the IPCC !
Let the War To End All Wars Begin, … yet Again !
😉

If the charts were graduated in whole degrees (something we can actually FEEL – maybe) instead of tenths, they would all show an essentially flat line and in audio terms, would barely resemble static.
Oxygen thieves the lot of ’em. If not for the benefits of their constant moaning and wailing – creating CO2, they should have their intakes tied off.

When will the funders, our elected officials, wake up to this? If only the Republicans take this up it could make things worse as it will look like more anti-science stuff. How do we get the truth out?

And let’s not forget all the previous massive adjustments that cooled down all temperatures before the satellite record.
A truly Mannian effort was required to flatten everything from 1850 to 1970, and leave just a rise since 1970.
It’s truly a joke and a fart !!

Christoph Dollis says:
May 12, 2013 at 6:27 pm
Great post! Tell her one more thing. They took a perfectly ordinary and inoffensive expression with a perfectly good meaning, climate change, and turned it into something that causes fear.
That is not the most harmful and hateful thing they accomplished. They made children fearful of hot weather – drained all the joy out of it.

Thanks for the news. The CRU just managed to show 2012 a bit warmer than it used to be.
The good old warming days seem to be gone, hard as they try.
I just updated the graph in my climate and weather pages.

Amazing, that is desperation and insanity combining to create satire.
With no other play left on their books, its same old play, for sure it will work differently, those uneducated doubters will believe us this time.

Theo Goodwin says:
May 12, 2013 at 7:30 pm
Christoph Dollis says:
May 12, 2013 at 6:27 pm
Great post! Tell her one more thing. They took a perfectly ordinary and inoffensive expression with a perfectly good meaning, climate change, and turned it into something that causes fear.
That is not the most harmful and hateful thing they accomplished. They made children fearful of hot weather – drained all the joy out of it.

Thanks, Theo. And good suggestion.
The conversation is continuing. This is bet an excerpt:

2h
@skepticalpark And this is just Britain. It’s devestating to people in less developed countries: http://is.gd/bCj6mp [link to an article showing deaths in Britain caused by lack of energy related to CO2 restrictions, etc.]
—
2h
@skepticalpark Who loses? Well the people who die and don’t have access to sufficient energy to live a decent life, to start with.
—
20m
@ChristophDollis I have to say, I hadn’t heard anything about that! That’s insane!
—
@skepticalpark Note how the propaganda term they chose, “climate change”, means that if **I** am right, and if climate cycles are natural
—
@skepticalpark and inevitable, they can still claim them as proof of their theory. Whatever happens, it’s reason to be afraid.
9m
—
@skepticalpark Now couple this with the Holocaust-esque “climate change denier” libel. Is this proper scientific discourse “Skeptical Park”?
8m
—
@skepticalpark “That’s insane!” 1. Why haven’t you heard about that? 2. WHY haven’t you heard about that? 3. … ? (Ponder this.)
7m
—
@skepticalpark “That’s insane!” It follows logically though, right? Energy is kind of important. Now assuming AGW is valid and I am wrong…
5m
—
@skepticalpark … still, ask yourself, why did they have to use such obvious propaganda terms and strategy to sell it?
4m
—
2m
@skepticalpark http://is.gd/R1yLi6 [link to this post on WattsUp] Check the record of previous adjustments, not just this last one. Notice a bias in the adjustments?
3m
—
@skepticalpark And why do they keep on making temperature measurements, and having to keep on adjusting it upwards after the fact?
4m
—
4m
@ChristophDollis Holy Moses! slow down! It’s a lot to take in! I’ve been reading – you know, when life allows – and I will certainly looking
—
@ChristophDollis at climate change with more critical eye – based on what you’ve pointed out! Need to digest, though!
Skeptical Park 6m
—
6m
@ChristophDollis no, it’s not proper scientific discourse

Now imagine if she knew about the Michael Mann’s IPCC hockey stick graph Medieval Warm Period “hide the decline” and the fraudulent shenanigins at the Climatic Research Unit?

I guess is something does not exist, just invent it. This worked well for entrepreneur’s, unfortunately for scientists this is so wrong on so many levels. Is there a complete and unhomogenized data set out there? In 5 to 10 years, we will not know what is truly going on period. This was something I feared coming from GISS but I guess CRU was too close to the truth and the believers needed to spread more uncertainty.

What I meant to ask in my above statement, is there a RAW data set for the measured era, with all this manipulating even if the earth began to cool we will never know as GISS and CRU now are completely inventing warmth that does not exist.

” Amazing, that is desperation and insanity combining to create satire.”
Very well put John.
There has to be some legal way that these fraudsters can be held to account.
Having said that the basic AGW theory is busted no matter what they do. We are told the CO2 levels are now above 400ppm and yet even with their adjustments the temperature has only marginally increased over the last 15 years.

Brad said “When will the funders, our elected officials, wake up to this? If only the Republicans take this up it could make things worse as it will look like more anti-science stuff. How do we get the truth out?”
Most of today’s elected officials and funders is behind this and this is just what they want.
Politized science. To get the truth out you need to get rid of these elected officials in the next election.

I would love to see an overview of all the adjustments to this series from version 1 and up.
I am still frustrated over the adjustments to the sea level series by NOAA, where the series over night went from showing sea level rise to showing sea level volume, by adding a compensation for a theoretical sinking of the sea floor to the data.
They have not yet got enough stick for this

The updated HadCRUT4 version doesn’t appear to be in any better agreement with Dr Spencer and Dr Christy’s UAH satellite data over recent years than either of the previous two HadCRUT versions.
The trend in HadCRUT4.2.0.0 from March 1997 to March 2013 remains +0.04C per decade compared to +0.09C per decade in UAH.

couple things.
cru use data from nws. so homogenization happens there.
also we now have 2000 more stations than we did before at berkeley.
posts forthcoming….
data recovery continues.
you should expect more warming as cru adds data. they are biased low relative to what we know from a dataset 6 times larger than theirs

From Wikipedia – Lots of scary parallels here.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian[1] novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes.[2] Their tyranny is headed by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. Big Brother and the Party justify their rule in the name of a supposed greater good.[1] The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line.

dwr54 says:
May 12, 2013 at 11:15 pmThe trend in HadCRUT4.2.0.0 from March 1997 to March 2013 remains +0.04C per decade
Would you happen to have both numbers to 3 significant digits? The reason I ask is that I did a bit of number crunching and found the following increases for the years 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. The increases were 0.008, 0.003, 0.003 and 0.004 respectively for an average of 0.0045 for the first 4 full years. However for the last full four years, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, the increases were 0.005, 0.007, 0.008 and 0.015 for an average of 0.00875. Thanks!

This isn’t temperature measurement; it’s temperature invention. The attempt at data manipulation is crude and obvious. The thermometer DaVinci’s are apparently reaching their wits end as they scramble to manufacture a warming signal without making the subterfuge appear too obvious. In that regard, they have failed.
The HadCRUT, and also the GISS temperature data, has been adjusted, homogenized and tinkered with to the point of irrelevance. Can it be trusted any more? Years from now, when HadCRUT 10.0 data is released, will we discover that the planet emerged from a major glaciation during the 1930s, leading to a long and sustained period of warming into the early 21st century similar to the Cambrian period? Nothing would surprise this observer.
Perhaps it would behoove us to stick with the RSS and UAH temperature data sets. They appear to be a tad more accurate than HadCRUT and CRUTEM — and GISS.

I just had to re-write my last post in today’s context.
2013 is part of a story, whose final outcome has yet to be published. The Global Warming Industry (GWI) exists in a world of perpetual war against the denialists, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political influence system euphemistically named Climate Change under the control of a privileged elite (the Team) that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes, or denialism. Their tyranny is headed by Big Al Gore, the quasi-divine leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who never debates his beliefs with outsiders and therefore some say may not even exist. Big Al and the GWI justify their rule in the name of a supposed greater good. The protagonist of the novel, Anthony Watts, is a member of the denialists who works for the truth and is responsible for exposing GWI propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to write articles which preserve the actual historical record and to expose the routine deceit, misrepresentations and the data manipulations of Big Al’s acolytes.

Hi Mosh
In Berkeley and the other global data sets you have thousands of locations and thousands of individual data points relating to each location that purport to show the maximum and minimum for a specific day. We both know the sometimes haphazard way in which reading were sometimes taken, that stations move and of interpolation.
If you had to bet $10000 on each of your data points being an accurate representation of the real maximum or minimum in that location, for that day, to a tenth of a degree, how many of those data points would you put forward for scrutiny?
To an accuracy of two tenths of a degree?
Three tenths of a degree?
I would guess none. I bet you haven’t even checked for the political affiliations of the keeper of the records at that station, which you believe in other circumstances to be so important.
Yet we apparently have a global temperature accurate to fractions of a degree. We all know about the power of averaging Mosh, but we need to take a reality pill sometimes when we believe there is a global temperature and we know its value to such fantastic accuracy.
It is high time the data you and others produce is broken down into the climate zones that exist, rather than the ‘global’ one size fits all which doesn’t. That wouldn’t make the data points any the more accurate, but we would get a better idea of those parts of the globe that are cooling, warming or static. How is that paper on cooling stations going?
Tonyb

The gain is so very tiny it hardly helps them demonstrate warming has continued. (maybe it puts off the day when they have to admit teh world is really cooling agian?)
When history is written it will be further damning evidence of their culpability in a science fraud that has devastated the economies and lives of millions of the innocent and poor. One wonders how they sleep at night and how they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning

Brian wrote at 9:14am: “is there a RAW data set for the measured era?”
Man, I’d love to have access to the original pen-and-ink records. But here’s something: HADCRUT’s co-religionists GISS are revising downward their older GHCN electronic records which, unlike the paper versions, have the virtue of traceability as they pass from v2 to v3 and beyond. This downward revision results in a spurious warming trend. I’ve gone into some detail at: http://endisnighnot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/giss-strange-anomalies.html
Here’s one specific item: The January 1900 temperature at Teigarhorn, Iceland was until October 2011 stated to be 0.7C. In November 2011 GISS changed this to -0.2C. Who knows what has become of the original paper-and-ink records? This unit of historical data – along with many more – is being manipulated. You can check this yourself: take a look at their latest version of reality at: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp_620040920000_14_0/station.txt. Look for Jan 1900.
An Icelander called Bjorn spotted that a March 1929 temperature of 5.4C at Stykkisholmur became (whoops!) -5.4C (i.e. 10.8C colder!!!) when GISS transcribed the data into their own database. Of course, human error is always with us. But, in pondering whether the ‘foul ups’ occur at the Icelandic Weather Bureau or at GISS Bjorn observes: “But the consistency of the one sided disreparences for 23 stations really do point the finger somwhat in direction of the GHCN beeing the baddy.” Before today’s question, “Can You Guess The Impact”, Bjorn was writing of “one-sided discrepancies. http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/ghcn-temperature-adjustments-affect-40-of-the-arctic/

Those who observe misinformation sources across all aspects of human life realise one thing quite quick: it’s not the data accuracy that matters but the ability of the masses to swallow it.
For forty years we were all told to swallow the ‘Red in the Bed’ ‘Moscow on Dunquerque beach’ nonsense, when the history of European war points to a zero frequency of Russia invading Western Europe, a very significant frequency of Spain, France, UK, Germany and Italy warmongering amongst themselves.
We were all told that all the wars in Asia were ‘against Communism’. Bullshit. They were all about corporate power which we were subsidising.
Liars have a long shelf life so long as the lies they tell suit the power players.
Liars whose lies don’t suit are exposed as liars and ostracised.
Truth tellers whose truth doesn’t suit are exposed in whatever way possible.
The only questions you must therefore ask about this lying is this: ‘who benefits from the lying and what are you going to do about it?’

Is anyone reading this stuff competent to apply Benford’s law to the data to see if adjustments look artificial, or is this not appropriate for increasing temperature anomolies?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law
I remember hearing of it it being used by forensic auditors to establish if financial data was real or manufactured.

For Australia, the ACORN data set of a little over 100 stations has been analysed extensively by my mates and me. It has no place being inserted into the Hadley data. It contains heroic assumptions with no supporting evidence. That is, it can be shown to be fictional at some stations we have looked at.
This is not science, this is propaganda.

Some people have alleged fraud, which is a hefty accusation to make. Time was that people would call you out and challenge you for a duel for less. I make a few observations.
1. The long-term trend is more important than the short-term trend. As far as I can tell these changes are neutral for the long-term trend, because temperatures at the beginning of the record are also now estimated higher than previously.
2. Uncertainty estimates are published with HadCRUT4. Let’s take the oft-discussed years 1998 and 2010, which have median estimates of +0.531 C and +0.547 C respectively. The 95% lower and upper bounds for these years are 1998: [0.441, 0.619] and 2010: [0.456, 0.639]. Given the size of these uncertainty estimates it is pointless to obsess over small revisions (or indeed small deviations from trend over short time periods) of the values of individual years.
3. To further press home the point I make in #2, it is worth noting that every year since 2001 has been statistically indistinguishable from the warmest year, once you take the uncertainties into account.
4. As another way to make the same point, if you look at the current 95% confidence interval for 2013 [0.231, 0.608], it is interesting that it just overlaps with the estimate for 1993 [0.055, 0.232]. If you eyeball the graph of the median estimates from 1993 to the present it is unlikely that anyone would dispute that there has been some warming, but even over 20 years the “obvious” signal struggle to escapes the noise.
We have to accept that the data is not good enough to draw conclusions about short time periods. It never will be. So that leaves us with long time periods, over which the warming is irrefutable and corroboratory evidence.
Let us suppose that the HadCRUT4 data was fraudulent, and the world was not warming. What would we expect.
A. We would expect that ocean heat content would be stable, or declining.
B. We would expect that sea level would be stable, or declining.
C. We would expect that sea-ice would be stable, or increasing.
D. We would expect that glaciers would be stable, or growing.
E. We would expect that snow cover would be stable, or increasing.
F. We would expect the the number of cold extreme records would be equal or greater to the number of hot extreme records.
Not all of this corroboratory evidence points in the same direction. Winter NH snow cover is increasing. Antarctic sea-ice is increasing. That’s it, though. All of the rest of it points towards the same result. The world is warming.
You can try and fool yourselves by obsessing about statistically insignificant variations from year-to-year if you want. Personally, I find such self-deception intolerable.

The catastrophists have two very powerful levers that switch Joe Public’s attention away from a subject close to an Englishman’s heart – weather/climate.
In the latter part of the 1960ies, when I could purchase 12+ pints of ale for a quid (£1) and you would (very) regularly see, and speak with, over 50% of the (male) population of your home town down t’ut pub, there were only two taboo subjects: Politics and religion.
Within a couple of months of Maggie Thatcher ‘getting in’ the pubs started to empty, slowly at first, as she removed restrictions on powerful, tinned beers being sold in off-licenses. Public houses have been in decline and have dwindled in numbers since then. Most folk sit in front of ‘the box’ with a few tins of whatever takes their fancy. An end to meeting up in numbers with your peers and fomenting discontent.
In the 21st Century, when I see, and mostly avoid talking to (maybe) 5% of my community (both sexes) in my visits to local watering holes you cannot talk about climate as it has been subsumed into both religion and politics.
Nice trick, unintentional or not.
Also, I count myself lucky if I can find an Imperial 1/3 of a pint of ale for £1. Boos all round.

The public at large tends to believe scientists until they realize they are using science as a cloak to hide their true intentions. This is subtle propaganda generated to influence public perception. Jones and his cadre of venal, anti-science charlatans are maneuvering to cover their asses (standing and funding). I say fire ’em all.

Brent HargreavesHere’s one specific item: The January 1900 temperature at Teigarhorn, Iceland was until October 2011 stated to be 0.7C. In November 2011 GISS changed this to -0.2C. Who knows what has become of the original paper-and-ink records?
Trausti Jonsson of the Icelandic Met Office has downloaded all the old records here.http://icelandweather.blog.is/blog/icelandweather/entry/1249149/
It takes a bit of working through, but he also shows 0.7C as the original record.I have a lot of the original docs, but only back to 1924.

pat williams says:
May 12, 2013 at 8:06 pm
> Convince anyone in Minnesota that it is warming….http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146674n
This is just a CBS copy of the first ice surge video covered in recent posts. No need to check this out if you checked those out.

Werner Brozek,
“Would you happen to have both numbers to 3 significant digits?”
To three significant figures, the trend in the latest HadCRUT4 set since March 1997 (which is the start month used in the WfTs graph featured in the above article) is +0.039C per decade. The previous version of HadCRUT4 was +0.035C per decade. In HadCRUT3 it is -0.004C per decade. The trend in the current UAH data from March 1997 is +0.087C per decade.

Amazing, all this finely adjusted measurement without any real verified attempt to track the significance of what they measure; of course if they really did that everybody would see they are attempting to thread an elephant through a needle with little success…

Christoph Dollis says:
May 13, 2013 at 1:23 am
Andy, I wish that wasn’t necessary (your suggestion of fiction). 😛
I know what you mean, but unfortunately every means is neccessary. The story does cover social aspects, to some extent false urgency and the betrayal of folks who genuinely care about the environment, so that would address Skeptical Park’s latest answer. But persuading her to take an hour to read a skeptical story is most likely impossible in this case anyhow. The vision of those deeply immersed in a memeplex is bent inwards, they don’t *want* to see outside.

It looks like, in addition to increasing the recent warming, they also made it look like the early 1900s warming trend wasn’t as big as it was previously — perhaps to make the current warming trend seem larger by comparison?

dwr54 says:
May 13, 2013 at 5:24 am
Thank you! So there was a slight increase in slope as stated, just not enough to see at the single significant digit level.
As you note, the UAH still has the higher slope from March 1997. However when it comes to statistically significant warming, the latest month and year for UAH is June, 1993. However before the adjustments, Hadcrut4 was July, 1994. Would you happen to be able to figure out how much later the July 1994 date becomes with the new version to March?
(SkS does not have the new version incorporated yet and from July, 1994 the number is 0.102 ±0.104 °C/decade (2σ))

@Paul Homewood
Thanks you for the link to original Icelandic data. I have made a copy.
Comparing it to the temperatures currently being displayed by GISS I find only a tiny discrepancy for that station (Teigarhorn) and that year (1900). It pains me to admit it but I may have been crying wolf; wrongly claiming that GISS have been depressing historical temperatures by 0.9C. If that is the case I shall delete the section of my blog making such claims. That’s a lot of number crunching for me (all stations, all years) but it’s a neccessary task.
One must have the integrity to stick to the facts even when (especially when!) they don’t support one’s pet hypothesis.

Actually might not be too difficult – today is due to be 21C at Minneapolis and tomorrow 33C. The blocking high has moved and all the cold temperatures are now over the NE of the USA with frosts for the next couple of days. The frosts will not raise many headlines but expect to be told about 90F temperatures in the Dakotas and Minnesota.

Werner Brozek says:
May 13, 2013 at 6:52 am
“So there was a slight increase in slope as stated, just not enough to see at the single significant digit level.”
Yes, there was an increase of 4/1000ths of a degree C per decade since March 1997 between the present and previous version of HadCRUT4. I was surprised that people were making allegations of “corruption” against the HadCRUT4 producers, because this update brings the HadCRUT4 trend slightly closer to that seen in UAH over the recent term. It makes one wonder what folk here must think about the validity of the UAH trend?
I lack the skills to calculate the statistical significance in the new HadCRUT4 data set between July 1994 and March 2013. I’ll have to await the SkS update. I would imagine it’s something in the same order though.
By the way, the SkS calculator gives UAH since 1997 as 0.094 +/- 0.222 at the two sigma interval. Am I right in thinking that this means there is a 1/20 chance that the true UAH trend since 1997 may be as low as -0.128C per decade, and an equal 1/20 chance that it may be as high as +0.316C/dec?

To those actively involved in trying to suppress the temperature results as they are available on-line from official sources, I say: Let fools stay fools if they want to be. Fiddling with the data they can, to save their jobs, but people still having to shove snow in late spring, will soon begin to doubt the data…http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/

Brian after Climategate I started what you are looking for. I could not bear that all that observational data had been corrupted
The raw data from over 2500 NOAA weather stations – 55,123,399 temperature readings so far taken hourly. The same ones, even with their bad siting. It’s a comparison of apples with apples
I will not lose it and will continue to make it available.
It’s the only way I and everyone else can know the truth. Click on my user name
Dave

MikeR says:
May 13, 2013 at 8:18 am
Steve Mosher’s comment is very interesting. No nefarious motives needed, just a natural consequence of adding more data.
But why is CRUTEM biased low? Do we understand what’s happening there?
#########
Their method of carving up the world into 5 degree bins probably contributes a some of the bias. Do folks here forget how much we slammed CRU methods over at Climate audit and AirVent?
you can visualize what that looks like by comparing how various methods work with
different data.http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/visualizing-the-average-robert-rohde.pdf
To see how bad the CRU method is we can do standard tests using perfect simulated data.
That is, create simulated data for the entire earth where we know the true average. Then sample that simulated world using a sub sample of stations.
Then compare methodshttp://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/robert-rohde-memo.pdf
Interestingly we also found that sometimes adding data to CRU method can give you a WORSE answer.

They did more than adjust the last few years. Note they “cooled” the early part of the record. The Temperature Record “Thumbtack” (TRT) was inserted at ~1950 and the trace rotated counterclockwise. This is the Hansen Trick that was used to lower the 1936 record to be below the 1998 super El Nino year.

tonyb says:
May 13, 2013 at 1:22 am
Hi Mosh
In Berkeley and the other global data sets you have thousands of locations and thousands of individual data points relating to each location that purport to show the maximum and minimum for a specific day. We both know the sometimes haphazard way in which reading were sometimes taken, that stations move and of interpolation.
If you had to bet $10000 on each of your data points being an accurate representation of the real maximum or minimum in that location, for that day, to a tenth of a degree, how many of those data points would you put forward for scrutiny?::
#############
1. the datafile has a column called uncertainty for each record.
2. I dont know what you mean by “real maximum” mythical beast.
3. Since we use CRN in the US I suppose I could find 100 that I would bet you 10K on
Thats a bet then. right?
To an accuracy of two tenths of a degree?
Three tenths of a degree?
I would guess none.
#############
then you would be wrong. looks like you forgot that we use CRN.
“II bet you haven’t even checked for the political affiliations of the keeper of the records at that station, which you believe in other circumstances to be so important.”
In the case of Russia I always check. The funniest examples are russian metadata records.. How do you think I figured out it was important to ask you this question. It was because I had to ask this question.
“Yet we apparently have a global temperature accurate to fractions of a degree. We all know about the power of averaging Mosh, but we need to take a reality pill sometimes when we believe there is a global temperature and we know its value to such fantastic accuracy.”
You are mistaken. Nobody claims this accuracy. Let me explain. Suppose I say the average
temperature of the earth is 14.87654789126378
What does that mean? it doesnt mean that I know it to this levels of accuracy. Let me repeat that. IT DOES NOT MEAN WE KNOW IT TO THAT LEVEL OF ACCURACY.
here is what it means. I have 2000 new stations. You dont know the temperature.
Now, Estimate the temperature of any one I will choose randomly. Go ahead.
When I guess I will use 14.87654789126378 and that estimate will minimize error.
the “average” temperature is that estimate which minimizes the error. Its not about the accuracy of the thermomemter its about minimizing the error.
“It is high time the data you and others produce is broken down into the climate zones that exist, rather than the ‘global’ one size fits all which doesn’t. That wouldn’t make the data points any the more accurate, but we would get a better idea of those parts of the globe that are cooling, warming or static. How is that paper on cooling stations going?”
Climate Zones? climate zones are derived from temperature and preciptation. These zones dont exist, they are created from data.
Cooling stations: We are coming out with a major update that should make that work easier. For the most part cooling stations are limited to the US and Australia.. and there they are not statistcally signifiacnt. In addition there is another update in the works that looks at preserving more local scale.. Not sure how long that will take

Mosh
Thanks for your unusually long response.
You have tens of thousands of data points. The 100 you could find would be out of how many?
Genuinely look forward to your cooling stations update although the local scale one sounds potentially more rewarding.
Tonyb

Brian H says:
May 12, 2013 at 5:09 pm“You’d think they would be smart enough to throw a contrary adjustment in here and there to give the appearance of impartiality.”
You’d think they would be smart enough to claim maybe 80% of scientists agree with CAGW – it’s still overwhelming, and wouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Instead, they had to claim 97%. Even tinpot dictators know better than to claim those kinds of margins in their sham elections.

Mosh, is it possible to tell the current average global temperature from the records? Climatists only ever mention anomalies.
So we could compute backwards using their adjusted data to find, say the average global temperature in 1934. We would expect this hypothetical back-computed temperature of 1934 to change with each adjustment.
So we could track that. I expect 1934 to get ever colder as time passes.
I think it was the year of the US dust bowl, right?

Mosh
Wee bit bemused about your comment re climate zones. As Marcel Leroux remarked ‘the world has many different climates’ The UK is in a temperate zone as you know. It may well be that all places in temperate zones are cooling as we are. It may be just some (or none ) of them are. Looking at zones seems worthwhile and meaningful as they are readily identified.
Bearing in mind the historic correlation of CET to global’ temperatures I would guess we are not the only ones suffering from a temperature downturn but can that be neatly attributed to zones or are other factors at play here? (wind direction would be key for us here in Western Europe) . How long would that change need to go on to be worthy of interest. 30 years or 10 or 5?
Also there are far more places than Russia where political affilliations might affect data or other factors such as inexperience might come into play as Camuffo diligently ascertained as part of the ‘Improv’ project.
tonyb

dwr54 says:
May 13, 2013 at 8:27 amIt makes one wonder what folk here must think about the validity of the UAH trend
I am only giving my personal opinion here. Please take a look at:http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Global temperature trends
Note that of the 5 data sets listed, only UAH has a positive trend over 10 years. The other 4: RSS, GISS, NCDC and Hadcrut4 are all negative over 10 years. So UAH seems to be a bit of an outlier.By the way, the SkS calculator gives UAH since 1997 as 0.094 +/- 0.222 at the two sigma interval. Am I right in thinking that this means there is a 1/20 chance that the true UAH trend since 1997 may be as low as -0.128C per decade, and an equal 1/20 chance that it may be as high as +0.316C/dec?
My interpretation is that there is a 95% chance the real number is between -0.128 and +0.316. So there would be a 2.5% chance it is above 0.316 and a 2.5% chance it is below -0.128 which would mean a 1/20 chance to be outside the 95% line, but a 1/40 chance it is higher than +0.316 and a 1/40 chance it is below -0.128. (If I am wrong here, please correct me.)

By continuously adjusting the end of record upward, they are simply digging themselves into a hole. If the trend in their adjusted data set is higher than the actual one, it will increasingly diverge from the instrumental record, making it ever more difficult to justify adjustments, that are becoming larger than any conceivable source of error. At the end they are left with a catastrophic slowdown, with no statistically significant increase for decades. Sounds familiar?

dwr54 says:
May 13, 2013 at 8:27 amI was surprised that people were making allegations of “corruption” against the HadCRUT4 producers
From 1997 to 2012 is 16 years. Here are the changes in thousandths of a degree with the new version of Hadcrut4 being higher than the old version in all cases. So starting with 1997, the numbers are 2, 8, 3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, and 15. The 0.015 was for 2012. What are the chances that the average anomaly goes up for 16 straight years by pure chance alone if a number of new sites are discovered? Assuming a 50% chance that the anomaly could go either way, the chances of 16 straight years of rises is 1 in 2^16 or 1 in 65,536. Of course this does not prove fraud, but considering that “HadCRUT4 was introduced in March 2012”, it just begs the question why it needed a major overhaul only a year later.
I believe people should not wonder why suspicions are aroused as to whether or not everything is kosher.

This has been going on for 20 years now.
Every month, or just periodically in earlier times, the records have been changed – cooling the past and warming the current records.
This occurred mainly at the NCDC and not so much with Hadcrut (but we are now on HadSST3 and Crutemp4 version 4.2.0.0).
Sorry, they have screwed around with your public records and intend to continue doing it.
We need to bring in real statisticians and real IT people to unsort this mess. We need to elect people willing to make this change.
Or we can just rely on the lower troposphere satellite temps.

We are building out a new temperature data conversion methodology and spreadsheet so that the major temperature data sets will be readily accessible in one location and available in standard format. During this process I will dig into the calibration data and add references and info where available.

@son of mulder says:
May 13, 2013 at 2:18 am
Is anyone reading this stuff competent to apply Benford’s law to the data to see if adjustments look artificial, or is this not appropriate for increasing temperature anomalies?
I’m no expert, but I don’t think Benford’s law is reliable unless the numbers involved cross several orders of magnitude. I don’t believe, with the very small “adjustments” they’ve made, that an analysis using Benford’s law would produce any reliable indication.
Can someone correct me on that if I’m wrong?

And Winston looked at the sheet handed him:
“Adjustments prior to 1972 shall be -0.2 degrees and after 1998 shall be +0.3 degrees.”
Winston wondered at the adjustment to the data. At this point, no one even knows if the data, prior to his adjustments, was raw data or already adjusted one or more times previously.
It didn’t matter. All Winston was sure of is that one of the lead climatologists needed more slope to match his computer model outputs. He punched out the new Fortran cards and then dropped the old cards into the Memory Hole where they were burned.
“There!” Winston exclaimed to himself. “Now the temperature data record is correct again; all is double-plus good.”

Funny – years working in a lab to GLP, GMP, USFDA and all sorts of regulations got it drilled into me that each and every single alteration of raw data records had to be individually justified and explained as to why it was being changed, with a signature and date. It seems that for all those years we were doing it wrong, and you could just attack the data with a broad brush when it no longer suited your desired outcome – who’d a thunk it?

For permission, contact us. See the About>Contact menu under the header.

All rights reserved worldwide.

Some material from contributors may contain additional copyrights of their respective company or organization.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on WUWT. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. This notice is required by recently enacted EU GDPR rules, and since WUWT is a globally read website, we need to keep the bureaucrats off our case!
Cookie Policy